religions Article Don Quixote and Saint John of the Cross’s Spiritual Chivalry † Luce López-Baralt Department of Spanish Studies, Río Piedras Campus, University of Puerto Rico, San Juan 00931, Puerto Rico; [email protected] † Translated by Marcela Raggio, Gloria Martínez, Guadalupe Herce, Daniela Tornello, Agustina Fredes and Verónica Mastrodonato Pavetti, members of the Victoria Ocampo Literary Translation Porgram, Cuyo National University (Universidad Nacional de Cuyo). Translator’s note (TN): In cases where there is no official English translation available, we have provided our own translation. Abstract: Despite its ludic appearance, “The adventure Don Quixote had with a dead body” (part I, chapter XIX) is one of the most complex pieces of Cervantes’ famous novel. In the midst of a dark night, the Manchegan knight errant confronts an otherwordly procession of robed men carrying torches who transport a dead “knight” on a bier. Don Quixote attacks them to “avenge” the myste- rious dead man, discovering they were priests secretly taking the body from Baeza to Segovia. He wants to see face to face the relic of the dead body, but humbly turns his back, avoiding the “close encounter”. Curiously enough, his easy victory renders him sad. Cervantes is alluding to the secret transfer of St. John of the Cross’ body from Úbeda to Segovia, claimed by the devoted widow Doña Ana de Peñalosa. However, Cervantes is also establishing a surprising dialogue with St. John’s symbolic “dark night”, in which he fights as a brave mystical knight. Concurrently, he is quoting the books of chivalry‘s funeral processions and the curiosity of the occasional knight who wants to glance at the dead body. Furthermore, we see how extremely conversant the novelist is with the religious genre of spiritual chivalry, strongly opposed to the loose fantasy of the books of chivalry. Unable to look at St. John’s relic, an authentic knight of the heavenly militia, Don Quixote seems Citation: López-Baralt, Luce. 2021. to silently acknowledge that there are higher chivalries than his own that he will never reach. No Don Quixote and Saint John of the wonder he ends the adventure with a sad countenance, gaining a new identity as the “Caballero de Cross’s Spiritual Chivalry. Religions la Triste Figura”. 12: 616. https://doi.org/10.3390/ rel12080616 Keywords: books of chivalry; books of spiritual chivalry; dark night of the soul; Caballero de la Triste Figura (Knight of the Sad Countenance); St. John of the Cross Academic Editor: Cristobal Serran-Pagan Y Fuentes Received: 22 June 2021 And so, Señor, it’s better to be a humble friar, in any order at all, than a valiant knight Accepted: 11 July 2021 errant (II, VIII: p. 508). 1 Published: 9 August 2021 1. A Bit of History: The Transfer of Saint John of the Cross’s Remains from Úbeda Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral to Segovia with regard to jurisdictional claims in We are in the middle of a dark night in the year 1593. It is literally the middle of a dark published maps and institutional affil- midnight since we have a record of the time of the events. The remains of Saint John of iations. the Cross are furtively transferred across isolated and deserted lands from Úbeda, where he died, to Segovia. The Court Marshal, Don Juan de Medina Ceballos, is guarding the remains, now turned into relic, along with the guards and companions who are carrying it on a litter. They avoid the main path to Madrid so as not to be seen, and take different Copyright: © 2021 by the author. lanes and detours through Jaén, Martos, and Montilla. When they arrive in Martos, on a Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. high hill, not too far away from the road, a man appears unexpectedly and shouts loudly: This article is an open access article “Where are you carrying that corpse, you wicked mob? Leave the friar’s remains you are distributed under the terms and 2 3 conditions of the Creative Commons taking away ... ” (Pasquau 1960, p. 2). This startling appearance “made the Marshal 4 Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// and his companions feel so fearful and alarmed that their hairs stood on end” (Fernández creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ Navarrete 1819, pp. 78–79). Later, down the road, when they reach a deserted field, another 4.0/). man appears unexpectedly and, once more, the entourage is asked to give an account of Religions 2021, 12, 616. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel12080616 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/religions Religions 2021, 12, 616 2 of 20 what they are carrying: Medina and his companions answer they have superior orders to remain undercover, but the man keeps asking them questions. In the middle of these disturbing encounters, the person carrying the bier notices that the small box containing the Saint’s remains is surrounded by shining lights. The upsetting night scene sparkled with strange lights inevitably conjures up “the adventure Don Quixote had with a dead body” (I, XIX), which is transferred by men draped in mourning from Baeza to Segovia. In the middle of the dark night, the gentleman bursts onto the road where the entourage, muttering and holding burning torches, is carrying the mysterious “dead knight”. I have quoted Don Quixote’s literal words, and they should be noted since his way of referring to the enigmatic corpse as “knight” does not seem fortuitous. The gentleman couches his lance, positions himself in Rocinante’s saddle, and, raising his voice, complains to the “shirted men” (making reference to the priests dressing surplices who escorted the dead body): “Halt, O knights, or whomsoever you may be, and give an account of yourselves: from whence you come, whither you are going, and whom you carry on that bier ... ” (I, XIX, p. 136). Don Quixote’s appearance and questioning closely concur with the testimony of the first witnesses who declared about the life of the venerable Friar John of the Cross in the deposition for his beatification process. Did Cervantes know about the surreptitious transfer of the Reformer’s remains that took place in mid-1593, two years after the Saint died?5 That is what many Cervantists believe, based on the pioneer study of Martín Fernández Navarrete(1819), the first scholar who suggested the connection between the Reformer’s historical transfer to Segovia and the episode in chapter XIX of the first part of Quixote. It is highly probable that Cervantes was aware of the events, since he was in Úbeda for the wheat harvest in 1592, the year after the friar’s death and right before his remains were furtively carried to Segovia in the middle of the night (Sánchez 1990, p. 21). The events around the death of the future Saint John were so notorious that they would inevitably reach his ears: on the one hand, he was Saint Teresa’s Reform companion and confessor, who died in the odor of sanctity, and, on the other hand, he was the author of a profound mystical work with no precedents in the Peninsula. The clandestine transfer of his body aroused a heated dispute between Úbeda and Segovia, where he was secretly taken after dying unexpectedly from a “pestilential fever”. Let us remember the cause of his death, for I will refer to it later. Doña Ana de Peñalosa, who received spiritual direction from the Saint and was the addressee of The Living Flame of Love, is the person who plans the removal of the body from the convent in Úbeda where he was buried. The devoted widow, to whom Saint John addresses his last letter, had arranged with Friar Doria, Prior General of the Carmelite Order, that wherever Saint John died, his body would be transferred to Segovia. She wanted him to rest in the monastery he had founded in his hometown along with his brother, the Royal Council judge, Don Luis de Mercado. Naturally, the task would not be easy as Úbeda was logically reluctant to resign the Saint’s corporeal relic. However, after he died, Doña Ana made the appropriate diligences with Friar Nicolás de Jesús María, Vicar General of the Reform, so that the body could be transferred without any suspicion to Segovia, his hometown (Rodríguez Marín 1949, chp. IX, pp. 226–30).6 The secret transfer was planned to be performed nine months after the Reformer’s death; yet, the people involved found out that the body was “so incorrupt, fresh and intact, and with such a wonderful fragrance and aroma, that the transfer was postponed, and the body was covered with lime and soil so it could be verified later without any issues”7 (Fernández Navarrete 1819, p. 78). Already in mid-1593, Court Marshal Medina Ceballos, who was sent from Madrid “with a high sense of justice”, found out that the body was leaner and drier, but with the same “fragrance and aroma, so he placed the remains in a suitcase to hide them better”8 when they removed the body from the convent (Ibid.). The “suitcase” was actually a wooden box, but as it “was [ . ] small, they folded the legs for the body to fit in, and thus he was carried”.9 However, the story continues, because Úbeda did not surrender the body and established a dispute with Segovia. The serious misunderstanding over the Reformer’s remains reached Rome: in 1596, Clement Religions 2021, 12, 616 3 of 20 VIII issued a Papal Brief Expositium nobis fuit that ordered for the body to be brought back to Úbeda. Even though the request was quite explicit, Úbeda could not manage to get the body back: Bishop Don Bernardo de Sandoval y Roxas promised he would comply with the Brief, but he considered it convenient to treat the complex issue in a friendly way.